Jesus feeds the 5,000

We have been studying some of the miracles of Jesus. A miracle is an instant act of God. We learned about Jesus healing a man so he could get up and walk, people with leprosy, a woman just touched the garment of Jesus and was healed! Jesus brought people back to life that had died! Jesus did miracles to prove who He was, the Son of God.

This lesson is found in these scriptures: Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:35-44; Luke 9:12-17 and John 6:4-13. 

Jesus took a boat to a deserted place to be by Himself. But the crowds of people heard about it, and they followed Him on foot from the cities. 

Jesus has been teaching a couple years, so people want to see Him. Luke tells us there were about 5,000 men, so we need to add the woman and children, and that is a lot of people! (Luke 9:14)

When Jesus went out, He saw the crowds and was stirred by sympathy for them. Jesus went to them and healed the sick.

Later in the day, the Disciples came to Jesus and told Him that they were in a deserted place, and it is late. We should send the people away so that they can go to the surrounding villages and buy themselves some food.

Jesus told them that they didn’t need to send them away, just give them something to eat. They asked if they should go buy 200 denarii worth of bread, which is about 8 months wages back then.

Andrew told Jesus that there was a boy that has only 5 Barley loaves of bread and 2 fish. (John 6:9) The bread in Jesus’ time is not like ours. They are small, round, about 4 inches, and about ½ inch thick. They were poor people's bread, but still good food. The fish was probably to put on the bread, like sardines or tuna. (From John’s account and the way he worded the fish) It was enough for the boy that gave the food to the Disciples, but not enough for this crowd.

Jesus said: “Bring them here to Me.” Jesus told the crowd to sit on the grass in groups. It’s Spring and the people sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. The men sat apart in groups and the women sat together in groups with the children. This made it easy to divide up the food they would need.

Jesus took the 5 loaves of bread and the 2 fish and He looked up into heaven, and praying to God, Jesus gave thanks for the food. This is a great example of praying and thanking God for our food before we eat. Then Jesus handed it out to the people. He did the same with the fish.

When everyone had enough to eat, Jesus told the Disciples to collect the extra food because they didn’t want to waste anything. After the Disciples collected all the food, there were 12 baskets left over! Remember there are 12 Disciples and there were 12 baskets of food left over. Read the Bible verse: So, they all ate and were filled, and twelve baskets of the leftover fragments were taken up by them. Now after seeing this miracle, more people believed in Jesus.

I created this easy to make project for this lesson. If you cut a slit along the top of the basket and attach a piece of paper glued on the back (around the outside edges only), the kids can add and remove the fish and loaves. There is a teacher visual like you see above, and the basket and food can be printed in color or black & white. This includes assembly directions. You can download everything here.

You can also make this basket and food here.

Or you can purchase small real baskets or use disposable bowls with a piece of cloth or napkin (or paper towel). Add the fish & bread for the students to take home.  You can find the fish here.

Click here to download the worksheet.

We continue Miracles lapbook today. The students will leave them in class until we finish the miracles lessons, then they take them home. Click on the lapbook to see it. I decided to limit this lapbook to the miracles that Jesus did to prove Himself. We will study Malchus, Resurrection of Jesus and Jesus Returns to Heaven, etc., but I did not include these. If you'd like to add other miracles, you can see more Jesus lapbook printables here.

Bible verse:  Luke 9:17

Click here to download the lesson.

Click here to download the visuals.

Click here to download the pictures to color.

These visuals are updated as shown above.
Click here to download the visuals.
All visuals are not shown.

Click here to download the pictures to color.
(These are the same as the visuals but are black & white.)